Tag Archives: NFL agent

NFLPA exam week thoughts

24 Thursday Jul 2014

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Here are a few thoughts gathered while standing outside the Ritz-Carlton, handing out ITL literature to aspiring contract advisors during their lunch break.

  • According to what NFLPA officials announced at the start of today’s session, there are close to 300 people taking the exam this year. That’s a second straight bumper crop. Last year’s total was in the 300 neighborhood as well, but that was chalked up to the fact that it was the first class post-‘runner rule.’ Many here this year are with big firms, but many are independent. It just goes to show the passion so many have for pursuing a career in sports representation. It remains a very attractive industry.
  • Based on the sample size that passed by me on the way to find lunch, applicants are about 50-50 white and black, about 80 percent male, and probably 75 percent 40 or younger. Probably 30-40 percent looked to be 30 or younger.
  • I think I spoke to 6-8 people re-taking the test after failing last year.
  • It’s a young man’s game, on and off the field. There is at least one 22-year-old and one 23-year-old taking the test this year. So far, it looks like the oldest person taking the exam this year is in his early 50s, and there may be 3-4 more in that age range, but no more.
  • I’m told there’s at least one couple taking the exam.
  • It’s interesting to watch how the various aspiring agents carry themselves and how they dress. There are a handful in shorts and T-shirts as if they’re attending a cookout, but far more in coat and tie or a similar look. The lion’s share are in slacks and business shirts.
  • It’s not all about football here at the Ritz this week. The alt-rock band Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds made its way through the hotel bar last night after a local performance. Give them a listen (I did). They kinda suck.
  • Activities wrap up around 4:30-5 this afternoon, then the applicants return tomorrow for a morning session before the test is administered Friday afternoon.

We’ll have more from the scene tonight at the Ritz and its surroundings in Friday’s post.

 

WSW: All Wet in Washington

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Johnstown, Pa.-based Casey Muir of CRM Sports Management is a longtime ITL client who was certified in 2010. Brick by brick, he’s carved out a niche in the business despite launching his agent career without significant financial backing or affiliation with an established firm.

Though Casey has found his way in the business, it wasn’t always such a smooth ride. Take his experience on Exam Day 2010. Here’s his story, in his own words:

“So this was the agent exam of 2010, the last one before the lockout, and it was pouring, an absolute monsoon in D.C. the day of the agent exam.

“I was staying at a friend’s place outside of D.C. and took the Metro in, and when I left my friend’s place, it was not raining. So I get on the Metro, get off the Metro, and it was an absolute monsoon, just a complete downpour. The Metro let me off about four blocks away from the Four Seasons, which is where they gave the test back then.

“I walk through the doors and it looked like I had just jumped into a swimming pool. I was dressed business casual, and my slacks, shoes, socks, shirt, everything was soaking wet. I had my bag and study materials, which were also soaking wet. So I said to the girl at the receptionist’s desk, ‘Do you have a dryer?’ And she’s just looking at me dripping a puddle in the hotel lobby, and she said, ‘Hold on, I’ll be right back, let me get a manager.’

“So I’m standing there and people are coming in with their umbrellas, and everyone’s just looking at me. That’s before I had an iphone, so I had no weather app. We’ll blame it on that.

“But anyway, they’re like, ‘Listen, go in the bathroom and take off what you want us to dry,’ and I take off everything. I think I still had my boxers on. So this dude from the hotel comes in and gives me a robe and slippers, and I’m like, ‘All right, here we go,’ and I’m about to go in and take the test.

“So while I’m putting this robe on, other people are coming in and going out of the bathroom. Another guy looks at me and he’s soaking wet, too, and so he did the same thing. So there’s two of us who walk into the exam wearing a robe and slippers. I have to go through registration in my robe and my Four Seasons slippers. I took the test, and sometime during the test, they brought me my clothes. It was a nightmare, and you talk about embarrassing. . . .

“That’s how I started my career as a sports agent. In a robe and slippers. And now look at me, you know. So no matter what anyone does on that test this weekend, they’re not going to start out any worse than I did, and I turned out OK. I took a selfie in the bathroom of me in my robe. It might have been my first selfie. It was an interesting experience for sure.”

A note about agent violations

17 Thursday Jul 2014

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I just wanted to weigh in briefly on an agent incident that’s gotten a lot of play lately.

It involves Justin Bingman, an agent based in Pacific, Mo., who’s entering his second year as a contract advisor. Justin’s a client and a friend, and while I won’t defend what he did in this story — and neither would he — I think it’s really important we give this story a little perspective.

When prospective NFLPA contract advisors are pursuing certification, they take a written test at the end of July, then find out whether or not they passed the test in late September/early October. That means they’re essentially trying to board a fast-moving car if they want to jump into recruiting that year. This is one reason it’s so hard for first-year agents to sign a solid prospect in their first year certified. At the same time, all agents are facing a three-year clock for getting a player on an NFL roster, or that agent has his certification pulled. If he wants to keep going, he has to pay the initiation fee of almost $3,000 again as well as taking the exam again. The clock starts the moment the agent gets word that he has passed the exam, so most of the time, Year 1 is a wash, making it a two-year proposition to get a player signed to an NFL deal.

For this reason, when the following spring arrives, most agents are excited to apply all the lessons they’ve learned in their first six months as registered agents. It’s their first chance to really get in on the ground floor with legitimate prospects. It was in this spirit that Justin reached out to a few University of Texas prospects this spring.

I don’t remember exactly how our conversation was initiated, but somehow last spring, we discussed the fact that he had dined with a a few Longhorns in a recruiting capacity. In the course of speaking, it became obvious he had covered the costs of their meals. Even as a rookie agent, it’s something he should have known, no doubt. Still, I’m sure Justin approached this the same way he would approach any business meetup involving a light meal. At any rate, the way I remember things, I made it clear he had made a misstep, and he got off the phone in short order. I presumed he was excusing himself to set things right immediately. I still believe that.

I realize there’s a great misconception among fans regarding the agent industry. Many feel that any contact between agents and players results in immediate loss of eligibility. That’s not true. The only mistake Justin made was covering the costs of the meals. It’s a mistake I doubt Justin will ever make again.

Once again, I’m not defending Justin, and he wouldn’t expect me to, anyway. But there’s a certain level of hyperbole that comes with any minor mistakes by NFLPA contract advisors, and it’s important to separate the minor mistakes from the big, intentional ones that take down programs.

College football has a number of systemic problems with the mega-agencies that won’t be solved easily. They include coaches who funnel players to their agents; payments and other accommodations made with the parents or advisors of top players; financial advisors, workout trainers, and others who work as de facto runners for agents; and compliance departments who are afraid to stand up to the powers-that-be in the name of transparency and education.

Justin will most likely face some kind of sanctions from the NFLPA over this, and may have his registration with the Secretary of State of Texas pulled. He’ll also get hammered mercilessly on social media because he made a rookie agent mistake. My guess is that the players will have to make restitution and may have to sit out an early-season game.

At any rate, my point is not to excuse what Justin did. Instead, it’s this: if we want to be honest about really regulating the industry and rooting out the exploitation of student-athletes, we can’t treat incidents such as these as if they were treasonous, punish the bad actor mercilessly, and then act as if a dragon has been slayed. If we really want to fix these  kinds of problems, we’ve got a long way to go.

The Dead Period

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

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At ITL, we focus on the game behind the game; once you start to understand how the business of football works, it can be just as exciting as the game on the field. With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes in football this time of year, a time when most fans are working themselves into a frenzy counting down the minutes until camps start.

AFL: Arena teams are making their final pushes for the playoffs. Many teams are frantically trying to plug holes created by injuries, ineffectiveness, etc. Team officials, most of whom do their own scouting, are trying to find impact players, and more importantly, hoping to find agents or other contact info that can get them to the players they need.

NFLPA agent exam: Aspiring NFL contract advisors are gearing up to travel to Washington, D.C., next week for a two-day seminar that ends with a three-hour, open-book test covering 60 questions on the CBA and other related matters. They’ll find out at the end of September how they did. Historically, about 200-250 take the test and about 75 percent pass.

Agent days: Speaking of agents, several schools will hold meetings between the contract advisors registered with the school and the seniors who will be draft-eligible after the 2014 season. Typically, agents submit the names of players they wish to meet with in advance, and the school notifies them of the players who have expressed a mutual interest in meeting. The school usually asks agents to refrain from any other communications with players until after the season, which is problematic, but best left for discussion another time.

Training facilities: With the advent of a new CBA in 2011, much of the offseason emphasis for training switched from team facilities to training facilities all over the nation. Especially in NFL cities, you can find athletes at selected gyms, especially those that focus on combine prep, especially those in the Southeast.

Job-hunting gets tough: The desperation really sets in for NFL scouts let go in after the draft (as well as those who were dismissed in 2013). There’s a flurry of job-seeking for scouts in early June each year, but those jobs are filled quickly, and once they’re gone, opportunities are rare. Some scouts will find places with AFL teams, but not until after the season is over later this summer. Others will try to latch on with colleges in the increasingly common ‘director of player personnel’ roles, but most schools are looking to fill these jobs with young (and less expensive) coaches.

All-star games: Many groups see all-star games as a good way to bring the excitement of the gridiron to a city that doesn’t have an NFL team or direct affiliation with a major college football program. They use the summer to explore the viability of bringing 100 draft-eligible players to their local stadium in January to be studied and evaluated by NFL teams. Right now, we know of at least three games that are in exploratory stages, and I’m in preliminary discussion stages of running one of them. If I come to terms with the game’s organizers, I’ll announce it in this space.

I know this kind of information isn’t necessarily the kind that gets your blood pumping and your heart racing, but if your aim is to be part of the game — and this blog is designed for just such people — it helps to start thinking of the football biz as a 12-month proposition. Knowing what’s going on all around the game will help you find your niche.

Does an agent really matter?

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

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I was being interviewed by the Texas Tribune’s Terri Langford for this story in late June, and in the course of our conversation, she asked a question that I often hear: “What difference does all of this make? Does an agent really matter?” That question has been turning over in my mind for weeks now. I think I finally have an answer, so let’s s leave the topic of training fees today to discuss it.

I have to admit that when Terri asked me this question, I stumbled a bit. I should have had a ready answer, because the very question gets at the legitimacy of the entire sports representation industry. I don’t take the question personally; after all, I’m no agent, have never been an agent, and have no plans to be one. Still, many of my closest friends in the business are the most established contract advisors in the business, and others are trying to get there.

I guess the thing that irks me most is that whenever someone in the business — often a coach, a school official or a compliance professional — asks that question, their real agenda is to dismiss agents, though that wasn’t Terri’s intention.  So, next time I get this question, I’ll have an answer in two parts.

Here’s the first part. Let’s say you were accused of murder. Your life is on the line, and obviously, you need a lawyer. How would you go about finding one? Would you just settle for whoever the court appointed for you? Would you Google ‘defense lawyer’ and then just take the first guy that popped up in your browser? Would you just call a buddy who’d had legal trouble and take whoever he recommended? Of course not. You’d gather as much information as you possibly could, get educated on the charges you face, and try to find the most experienced and successful attorney you could afford.

Finding the right agent is very comparable for a young man aspiring to play in the NFL. The only difference is that his professional life, not his actual life, is what’s on the line. When a coach, school official, or other person forbids any contact between agents and players or their parents, he’s essentially taking away that research process.

Here’s the second part. The Colts signed a tight end named Erik Swoope as an undrafted free agent this spring. Ever heard of him? Unless you are a fan of Miami (Fla.) basketball, probably not. However, I bet you’ve heard of Saints TE Jimmy Graham. Their stories are similar: played hoops for the ‘Canes, had limited football experience (no football experience, in Swoope’s case), and wanted to give tight end a try. They also have one other thing in common: their agent, CAA’s Jimmy Sexton. Now, if Swoope wasn’t a Sexton client, maybe he’d have gotten a shot with an NFL team. But having a powerful agent going to bat for you, and having that agent tell his NFL contacts that he’s got a guy who reminds him of another of his ultra-successful clients, is more than a little advantageous.

These reasons may seem intuitive, but I’ve never had them at the ready when I got the ‘what are agents for’ question. Now I do, and so do you.

War Story Wednesday tomorrow. We’ll have something good. Check us out then.

 

 

NFL Agent ABCs (re: training fees)

07 Monday Jul 2014

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The escalating costs of training draft prospects, along with even the lowest-ratest players’ expectations of training, has made the business of being an NFL agent an expensive proposition. There are a few ways of handling this without writing big checks.

The first way is to refuse to pay for training. There’s one big agent from the Midwest who represents several head coaches at big FBS schools, and he continually gets his coaching clients to (a) recommend him for representation and (b) encourage the players to train at the school, not at a combine prep facility. This works very well for the agent, but 99 percent of agents don’t have that kind of a coaching clientele. For the rest of the business, having a ‘no training’ strategy pretty much relegates an agent to the lowest of the lowest-rated clients, the longest of the long shots. Constantly going to bat for such players can be trying and can kill your credibility with the scouts and team officials.

A second way to deal with this is to offer to pay a set fee. You can call this a ‘stipend’ or a ‘signing bonus’ or an ‘allotment’ or whatever you want to call it. Your client can then apply it to his training, or to a place to live, or to nutrition, or whatever. What you often find in the business is that players take the cost of training for granted, and give their contract advisors very little credit for covering this. What they really want is something in their pockets. If you go this route, you’ve fixed your costs while also asking the player to take part in managing finances. Like the first strategy, this one is going to limit the prospects you can sign, but it’s also going to keep you from blowing through an unlimited wad of cash.

A third approach is to offer to split the training with the player’s family. This can be an awkward conversation, but if a player is truly looking for good representation and not just a free ride through the spring, it can work. More and more, parents are starting to get involved in the costs of training, but it can be hard to figure out what families have such resources. In this case, you’ll probably need to have a good trainer at the ready who’s nearby the player’s family so the living expenses can be reduced.

In all these strategies, you’ll need to find the right player to pursue this. Probably not one who’s being highly recruited, and one who has taken his studies rather seriously. We’ll talk more about finding players this week.

NFL Agent ABCs (Pt. 3)

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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So far, we’ve discussed the costs of registering with the NFLPA and the costs associated with recruiting. Today, let’s talk about training fees.

I always say that the business of football representation turns over about every 3-4 years. If there’s been one major change in the last half-decade, it’s combine prep. The specialized training that football prospects receive has gone from something that nobody did (15 years ago) to something that the biggest firms offered to players rated as certified first-rounders (10 years ago) to something that most draftable players got (five years ago) to something that every player that aspires to be drafted expects from his agent.

How much does training cost? For the truly established programs that have been training first-rounders for years and have proven track records, you’re looking at a total training cost that approaches $25,000-$30,000. That cost usually includes 6-8 weeks of training plus lodging, supplements and food designed to enhance muscle-building and take weight off (or put it on). Some facilities also offer options. For example, most top prospects will expect a car, so facilities might roll this into the price. Some prospects will want individual rooms rather than roommates. There are also out-of-pocket expenses like deep tissue massage or interview prep; some trainers roll this into the total price, and some make them options. The problem is, when one athlete sees his training brethren getting these perks, it’s hard for an agent to tell him he’s not inclined to pay for such add-ons. Of course, this doesn’t address the cost of flying the prospect home to see his girlfriend, or celebrate a parent’s birthday weekend, or any other special request an elite client might have.

As one might expect, this has had a major impact on the people seeking to represent young athletes. The cost of training has truly separated the men from the boys when it comes to agencies, with some flatly refusing to pay exorbitant training fees and some seeing them as the cost of doing business. It’s a major risk that comes with no guarantees. Probably every other year I get a new agent who subscribes who spent more than $20,000 on combine prep for a player who’s not on an NFL roster the week after the draft.

Often, an agent comes to the business completely oblivious about training fees and what they represent in the recruiting process. I guess the upside is that contract advisors with unlimited resources can often land late-round prospects with tip-top training offers. Of course, the odds of late-round draftees making it to a second contract are not good, so chances of recovering by assessing an annual three percent on the player’s contract are remote. Ineffective play, injuries, or abundance at a position might conspire to keep a player off a team’s roster, and unless he makes the active 53, he owes his agent nothing.

We’ll talk about how agents deal with exorbitant training fees in Monday’s edition.

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got a sample question for the NFLPA exam. Here’s the answer: (C) $885,000.00.

The explanation: First you must determine signing bonus proration, in this case $800K/4 years = $200K/yr. Then add that number to the first year paragraph 5 salary. $420K + $200K = $620K. Then apply the 25% Rule – multiply the $620K by 0.25 (25%) = $155K. That is the max yearly increase. Then just add the numbers for each year:

Year 1 – $420K
Year 2 – $420K + $155K = $575K
Year 3 – $575K + $155K = $730K
Year 4 – $730K + $155K = $885K

War Story Weds: Lone Star Law

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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To illustrate our point about the importance of state registration for agents, I thought I’d make today’s WSW about a series of phone calls we got last spring.

We’re fortunate to work with plenty of new NFLPA contract advisors who reach out to us when they have questions. Around May or June of 2013, several panicked callers told us about registered letters they’d received from the office of the Secretary of State of Texas. Each recipient had (a) signed a player who finished his college football eligibility with a Texas school and (b) not registered as an athlete agent in Texas. They had been threatened with significant fines by the AG if they couldn’t prove registration, or if they couldn’t counter charges that they had signed a player from a Texas school.

In almost every case, it was a first- or second-year certified contract advisor who had had no intention of recruiting players from Texas schools. However, as happens every December/January, each had gotten inquiries from unsigned players who had sifted through the NFLPA’s published listing of certified agents and cold-called them. These callers, like so many would-be draft prospects hoping to earn the attention of NFL teams, saw signing with an agent as the best way to jump-start their pro football dreams. Rather than waiting to be courted by potential representatives, they were doing their own courting, and they wound up signed by agents trying to do them favors. These agents, who were acting altruistically, had no idea they were setting themselves up for a major fine.

Ultimately, probably a half-dozen agents called with similar stories. None had signed a draftee, and I think only one even signed a player who went to a rookie tryout camp (he ultimately signed briefly in Canada). Still, these agents were facing fines. What’s more, the way the statute is written, even if they had signed a player who had been out of college for several years, they were facing fines if it was the player’s first agent. In the eyes of the state, even if the young man had been out of college football for years, he was still an amateur until he signed an SRA (standard representation agreement).

So what’s the rest of the story? I referred all the agents who had called me to a sports attorney I know and he was able to smooth things out with the state.

There are two takeaways from this experience. One, understand that statutes are written most often by people who see athlete agents as threats, and don’t really understand the business. The people writing these laws don’t understand that the overwhelming majority of contract advisors get in the business to help young players, not to suck money out of them. Real enforcement of laws and investigation of the firms signing high-end players might make a difference in cleaning up the business, but ultimately, this doesn’t win anyone votes and may cost a state’s team its title hopes. So very little gets done.

Be that as it may, you have to make sure you know the laws in the states as you decide where to recruit. Especially in Texas. That’s the second takeaway. Fines are an added cost you don’t want to incur.

More on the costs of the business on Thursday.

The ABCs of being an NFL Agent (Pt. 2)

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

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On Tuesday, we dug in a bit on an overview of the job of NFL contract advisor. Today, we’ll talk a bit more about the finances of things, since they often come up when I talk to someone considering the business.

As we’ve already covered, your start-up costs, just for the purposes of registering with the NFLPA so you can take the exam, are about $5000, presuming you pass. Still, in a way, that’s just the start of expenses. Of course, there are a lot of variables that determine what your budget should be. The two biggest are recruiting and training.

Within recruiting, there are a couple of questions an agent has to ask himself. First, where will I recruit? If an agent seeks to recruit nationally — and I always encourage new contract advisors not to do this — he’s got lots of costs ahead. For example, to register in Texas, my home state, you’re looking at a $500 registration fee plus a $50,000 surety bond, which costs $1,000 and doesn’t translate to other states. More and more states are requiring such bonds on top of their registration fees. Texas is on the high end when it comes to costs, but still, there are plenty of states that have talented athletes (especially in the Southeast). If you want to do this legally and ethically, it will cost you. Let’s say you register in the 3-4 states closest to you. You’re probably looking at a couple thousand dollars, just to be safe.

Then there’s travel. If you participate in agent days at NCAA schools, you’ll spend a fair amount of time traveling to schools in the summer, and depending on where you live, each trip might represent a plane ride and a hotel stay (and maybe a rental car). As you move into the season, you may or may not have a lot of travel (depending on whether or not you want to attend games regularly), but as you move into November and December, you will most certainly be required to sit down at a kitchen table with parents and players to state your case. Depending on how many players you’re courting, that adds up, too. Let’s say you make it to the finals with five kids, and spend $500 per player, on average, on lodging and travel. That’s another $2500.

At this point, an agent is near spending $10,000, and he doesn’t even have a client on SRA yet. We’ll roll out the expenses of combine prep as we continue the discussion this week.

The ABCs of being an NFL agent

30 Monday Jun 2014

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In less than a month, about 250 men and women will arrive at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., to take the 2014 NFLPA agent exam. Since the business of being an agent seems to carry so much intrigue, I thought I’d shed a little light on the business this week. Let’s start with the registration process.

As of today, there are 814 registered NFLPA contract advisors. Step one for all of them was registering in January before taking the test the following July. Upon registration, your first fee ($2,500) is due. To register, you must have at least a postgraduate degree or seven years of experience negotiating contracts. Once the NFLPA approves your application, confirming that you have an advanced degree and that you don’t have any arrests, bankruptcies or other blips that might preclude registration, officials send a copy of the Collective Bargaining Agreement as well as other study materials.

Sometimes, it takes a while to get those source materials, especially if there’s anything that holds up the review process. If you’ve ever had any legal or financial trouble, the process could drag. I’ve heard of people not getting the go-ahead to take the exam until literally a week before the test is administered at the end of July. It can be very frustrating, especially if you aren’t an attorney or if you struggle with tests. Of course, that just adds to your costs, as buying flights just days before your departure can add hundreds of dollars to the cost.

Speaking of money, if you’re a person who’s really low on funds, consider waiting before you dive into the representation world. By the time you get the results of your exam, you will already be down $2,500, and no matter the results of your exam, it’s a good news/bad news proposition. If you didn’t pass, sorry! The NFLPA keeps your money and gives you another shot to take it next summer at no extra cost (besides the trip back to D.C. in July).

Then again, if you pass, congratulations! Now the NFLPA needs a $1,200 annual dues fee plus liability insurance of about $1,400, and even if you’re an attorney with your own liability insurance, you still need to buy this. Bottom line: to get fully certified and ready to roll as a contract advisor, you’re in about $5K (plus the cost of travel/hotel/food for the exam) before you fire your first shot, figuratively.

More bad news: you are forbidden from any form of recruiting until you pass the exam, and you won’t know your results until at least October. This means all other agents have attended agent days; gathered contact information; built relationships with prospects and their parents; and whittled down their recruiting lists for 3-4 months before you’re allowed to make your first call.

That’s enough to chew on for one day. We’ll be back with more Tuesday.